Sensory Assault
by R4v3n Kn1ght
Summary: James T. Kirk discovers some things about his roommate, Leonard McCoy, that he simply cannot stand! He tries to handle the situation, but then realizes that he wouldn't want his friend to be any other way. Mainly, a humor fic.


**Author's Note:** _I do not own Star Trek, or any recognizable characters, locations, etc. They all belong to Gene Roddenberry and Paramount Pictures, and my playing with the characters is not intended as disrespect for the characters or the actors that give them life. _

_The main body of this fic was inspired by events that happened to me. I thought it would be way too much fun to not stick our characters in a similar situation. Everything after the humorous part (obviously) did not happen to me. Either way, enjoy, everyone! _

**Sensory Assault**

When he blearily opened his eyes, Jim Kirk was surprised to discover that it was still dark in the room. For a moment, he couldn't figure out what could possibly have awoken him. It wasn't an alarm to get up for the day – that wouldn't happen for another…He turned his head in an awkward angle to check…That wouldn't happen for another three hours!

No one was trying to break into the room. Jim smiled as he remembered the one time that he stole some valuable medical supplies as a prank on his roommate after said roommate filed a treatment report for curing his drunkenness when he promised not to. The look on Leonard McCoy's face when security forced open the door just as he was stepping out of the bathroom with his towel around his waist was too priceless for Jim. The revenge the doctor got – hypo-ing him with something that caused a serious allergic reaction, then refusing to help him to the medical building, or to treat him – was still worth it. However, security was not forcing their door open.

Jim sat up in his bed and rubbed his eyes, then gazed out into the darkness, pretending that he had something as awesome as night-vision. Nothing was on fire so much as he could tell. That was a good sign.

He yawned silently into the darkness of the room. He still couldn't figure out what woke him up as he drifted off back into slumber, satisfied in the knowledge that at the very least his living space wasn't under attack or on fire.

~X~X~X~X~X~

Jim flailed in his bedcovers as he was jarred from sleep again! In his abrupt arrival from dreamland he tangled himself tightly in the sheets. He started shifting like an escape artist trying to get out of a shackled body bag. Something was roaring…and it wasn't his stomach. Jim struggled with his sheets until they won.

He landed hard on the floor with a soft grunt but a loud thud.

Jim lay there, fully contemplating wiggling under his bed to save himself if whatever was roaring decided to eat either Bones or him, when it was quiet for a moment in the room. Then, suddenly, a deafening noise erupted again in the room! Jim flinched and renewed his struggle to escape his sheets that had defeated him in a wrestling match. It was a loud and terrifying sound that reverberated through the room! As he finally came out of his disoriented state he finally realized where that horrible sound was coming from.

In the dark, Jim Kirk glared viciously in the direction of Leonard McCoy's bed.

His roommate was snoring. And not just snoring. He was snoring to such a volume that Jim swore should have caused at least three alarms to blare! Why wasn't the entire building being evacuated? Why wasn't an official coming to their door and knocking on it firmly to tell them that they were violating noise restrictions?

The sound in the room reminded Jim of a hoverbike about to lose power in its gravity-resistance generator. It was just…awful. There was no way he was going to be able to sleep tonight – not with this insane racket going on in their shared academy room. And considering he wasn't even in bed anymore, with no way that he could figure to wiggle out of the tangle and tightly suffocating bedding until there was at least one source of light in the room to see how to manage this. Where was night vision when he needed it?

Resigned to spending the night awake and trapped on the floor next to his bed, Jim Kirk decided to glare in the general direction of Leonard McCoy.

~X~X~X~X~X~

He was running, running across a horizon completely white! Everything was white. Was it snowing? Either way, he heard a monstrous growling, which quickly transformed into a roaring, then back to a strange growling. He turned and saw this…disgusting looking creature coming at him! Then, he realized that it was pursuing his fleeing form as he charged blindly across the white terrain. "Jim!" the younger man heard distantly. He thought it was weird that this monstrous creature spoke Standard, never mind knew his name! As he turned his head around to make sure nothing – or no one – else was behind him in his terrified sprinting, he heard it again. "Hey! Jim-boy!" Now, he was really confused. In that moment of complete disorientation, he felt the ground take a sharp plummet and down he tumbled, occasionally seeing the monster-creature in pursuit of him down the hill as he rolled.

He could have sworn the thing spoke with McCoy's voice. But that was just silly. He landed on his back on a sheet of ice, watching dazedly for an eternal instant as the monster-thing hurtled towards him. Then, he began to shake. "Jim! I'll hypo you if you don't wake up on your own!"

Wake up? Hypo? Jim's eyes snapped open the moment he realized in his sleep that he was dreaming…

…to find himself staring his roommate in the face. "Bones?" he groggily mumbled.

His friend and roommate frowned at him. "What in the name of non-replicated Georgian peaches are you doing on the floor like that?"

Jim's eyes were half open because of a mixture of sleep deprivation and also from the shock of finding himself in a lit room. He groaned. "Why you…wi…ow?" he barely managed to ask.

"Uh," droned McCoy for a moment until what Jim had tried to say clicked with him. "Why'd I open the window?" Jim gave him the slowest nod he'd ever seen. Even extremely injured patients were able to nod faster and more energetically than that. "Because, Jim, it's daylight! We both have classes to get to today. Or have you forgotten that we're actually in an academy? You do remember enlisting a few months back, don't you?" That earned him a non-effective glare.

McCoy didn't let it faze him as he looked at Jim's bedding wrapped around him tighter than a wall of stoicism around a Vulcan. "My God, Jim, how'd you manage to almost strangle yourself?" Without waiting for a response, the doctor started to manhandle Jim to try to get him free, flipping him over roughly from time to time when the bedding required it. He was mumbling to himself in a mixture of frustration and amazement while Jim was groaning or whining with every time his face or head collided with the floor with McCoy's less than gentle bedside – in this case literally – manner.

When Jim was freed both men were nearly exhausted. Jim was slowly starting to become more alert, mainly from the exertion. "I was asleep like that?" he asked, surprised that he'd managed, considering the snoring.

"Yeah, I didn't think you were either. Damn near impossible to see with so much crap wrapped around you! Used my scanner to find out if you were even breathing."

Jim offered a smirk. "Aw, I didn't think you cared that much."

McCoy stood up. "Guess that's what happens when you become friends with the guy you throw up on the first time you met."

Jim snorted that time, remembering the incident. "Yeah, I guess so." Jim got to his feet but swayed a little as his entire spine cracked, causing McCoy to wince. "That was awesome," Jim moaned, satisfied. Then he realized that he was being stared at. Usually, being stared at didn't bother him, particularly if it were a really gorgeous woman – and they didn't even have to be that intelligent – or an Orion…Orions were good. He promptly forgot about his roommate staring at him with a strange expression as his mind drifted off to the pretty Orion girl he'd seen walking around campus. Oh, the things he'd like to do with – to – her. He smiled to himself.

Then, he was jarred out of his fantasy that definitely involved him, that Orion girl, and a bed by the unpleasant feeling of a hypo being jammed into his neck!

"Bones, what the—"

"You look like hell, Jim," he replied, not even bothering to look at the younger man. "Thought I'd do you a favor and give you something that would increase your energy until you can at least get to the mess and shovel what you call breakfast, but what any other person – or alien for that matter! – would simply call a collection of sugar that'll cause you to drop over from heart failure by the time you hit thirty, into your mouth!" McCoy was wandering around the room, getting his things together for the day. As Jim watched, he realized that Bones was already dressed in his red cadet uniform! When did he change? And then he thought why wasn't he changed?

"You coming or what, Jim-boy?" he asked as he was about to make his way to the door. "You have that morning class with Pike, and I know that he won't let you get out of another one this close together!"

Jim looked at the chronometer and his eyes widened. He would barely have time to eat never mind shower and get dressed. In a split second decision, he decreed to himself that showering would have to wait! With a tornado of chaotic movement, Jim managed to get dressed, gather his things, and somehow brush his teeth all in less than a few minutes. With a dramatic rolling of his eyes, McCoy opened the door and they both left their room.

"By the way, how did you end up on the floor like that, Jim?"

Jim simply shrugged his shoulders, "Just fell out of bed, I guess." He couldn't bring himself to tell Bones that it was the terrifying noise of his snoring that made him fall off his bed and get barely any sleep. He wasn't in the mood to risk being stabbed vengefully in the neck with another hypo.

One look at McCoy, however, let him know that his roommate didn't believe that excuse for a second. "Yeah," he said. "Sure, Jim."

~X~X~X~X~X~

Jim was sure that he had the best roommate when said roommate was awake, but the worst possible roommate when that person slept. Jim stared up at the ceiling listening to the thunderous snoring just ten feet away. If anyone could look at him, he knew they would probably see bloodshot eyes.

At that instant, Jim wondered if Leonard McCoy was part creature-of-unknown-origin and part human. Maybe he just didn't want anyone to know. It would certainly explain why right now he sounded a little like a mixture between a human being snoring and a swamp-dwelling lizard with a serious sinus congestion. The younger man turned his head in the direction of his roommate. He let his mind wander, morphing McCoy's body in his imagination to something like a crocodile and a bear that was laying in a mud puddle, looking as miserable in sickness as Jim himself was miserable in sleeplessness.

Then, Leonard snorted and shuffled in his bunk, and Jim's imagination instantly added a pig snout and hooves to this "crocobear." For the first time since his sleep has been disturbed, Jim chuckled to himself. Maybe the lack of sleep was making him think every little sound was funny.

After he stopped chuckling to himself, he became aware of something worse than Bones's snoring. Instead of invading his eardrums, it was invading another sensory organ.

Jim sniffed and instantly regretted it! This was far more offensive than the powerful snores. This was…rank!

Exhaling as much air as possible in a frustrated huff, Jim flung his bedding off of his body and went on the hunt for the culprit. He knew it could only be three possible things, and he was determined to locate the source of the offensive odor if it was the last thing he did.

He held his breath as long as possible as he blindly navigated in the dark dormitory room. When he smashed into the wall just next to the door to the washroom he'd had enough of living like a bat that had no vocal chords to navigate through the use of sonar skills. "Computer, lights at three percent." He heard the quit hum of the lights turning on and making objects just barely visible in the room. He needed Bones to stay asleep, but he needed enough light to not smash into anything else. This was just ridiculous.

He stepped up to the washroom door. It slid open soundlessly, allowing him entrance. Once it closed behind him, he whispered, "Computer, lights." In his sleeplessness, he forgot what an unspecified lights command would do. It took everything in him not to cry out at the pain of the washroom lights blaring on at full illumination. He threw his hands over his blue eyes and grimaced and he painfully whispered, "Computer!" snapping at the machine similarly to Bones's daily, grumpy inflection. "Lights at twenty percent!" When he deemed it safe to open his eyes again, Jim mumbled to himself, knowing he was cursing, but not exactly aware of what he was saying. He wondered if this was what it felt like to be his roommate.

He found what he was looking for – the laundry bin. The dormitories still required the cadets to bring their laundry to the end of their floor in order to send them all down the collective laundry chute where everything was sorted, laundered, folded and returned in compact, neat little compartments again. This process was repeated every seventh day. Kirk didn't want to know nor cared to know what poor bastard's job it was to handle that! He remembered handling his own laundry in Iowa, and he considered it a hassle and almost a punishment-like chore. If he had to do the laundry for thousands upon thousands of cadets and officers in Starfleet…well, Jim would rather shoot himself with a phaser set to kill.

With barely concealed disgust, Jim opened and peered into the laundry bin and had a horrifying thought. What if Bones's laundry got his clothes all disgusting? What if his clothes smelled like Bones? Jim reached in and sought for something that could potentially smell like the smell that was causing his nose hairs to curl in protest! He was getting sick as he thought for a fleeting second that he was probably touching his roommate's dirty underwear. Panicked, he pushed that thought away as he focused on his task – find the culprit of the stench! Then, he held up a sock that he knew was not his!

He stared at it for a moment like it was potentially his worst enemy. Then, with an ever-increasing frown, he brought his hand – and thus the suspicious sock – closer to his face, closed his eyes…and sniffed. Something wasn't right. It wasn't as bad as it should have been. It wasn't pleasant, either, by any means, but it didn't match the offensive stench that caused him to start this crusade. He sniffed one more time to make sure. No. It wasn't the sock. It was similar, but not quite it. At least this helped him narrow it down further.

It was connected to feet.

Jim tossed the dirty sock back with the rest of the laundry and then made his way out of the washroom, ordered the lights out before he went through the door that slid soundlessly open for him when he approached.

His eyes adjusted to the extremely dim lighting relatively quickly. He stared at the noisily snoring…snorting?...making-weird-sounds-in-his-sleep roommate as he contemplated whether or not what he was thinking of doing to be a wise course of action or not. Steeling his resolve, Jim approached the end of McCoy's bed and knelt down, hoping this would not be a mistake.

With as much stealth as he could manage, he worked the corner of the bedding free from its securely tucked position around the mattress. It took him quite some time. The smell – that overwhelming smell – was getting stronger. He knew he was on the right track. He felt like a bloodhound hot on the trail of pursuit. He slowly, painstakingly slowly, lifted the covers to reveal one of McCoy's bare feet. Jim smiled as though in victory as he let his nose guide him closer to the foot. But if Jim Kirk should have learned anything by this point in his life, it was to never celebrate prematurely.

As the sleeping McCoy half snorted and half snored, the foot lashed out and impacted Jim squarely in his right eye! With a soft groan of surprise, the younger cadet found himself sprawled on the floor, his hand over his eye. "Son of a—" He writhed on the floor, desperate to contain his sounds of pain. He'd just been kicked in the face by his sleeping roommate!

While the pain began to subside, Jim's nostrils were assaulted again by a horrific smell! His eyes sprung open, although one opened with a bit more effort. In the semi-darkness of the room, he instantly located the perpetrator of this mission! He glared as viciously as he could at the pair of inanimate objects not two inches from his nose.

Leonard McCoy's regulation style boots.

Jim exploded in vengeance upon the footwear as he struggled to stand while his hand vengefully latched onto both boots in one firm grip. Once he regained his balance, considering he was a little off-balance from being kicked in the eye, he stomped to the window. It was at this moment that he praised the person that designed Starfleet dormitories to have real glass windows as homage to the old style university dormitory buildings. He entered the unlocking code for the window and watched with a twisted, pleased smile as the glass window slid open to admit the relatively warm fresh air of spring. He reached his hand that gripped the offensive boots as far out of the open window as he could…

…and released them.

He leaned out of the window just in time to hear them land in the shrubbery that circled the building decoratively. Jim then punched in the code that would close the window again. He leaned his back against the console as he heard the window fasten tightly again, shielding the room from the outdoors. Jim breathed in deeply, basking in the room that no longer smelled like overwhelming foot-sweat and smiled to himself. Maybe some sort of airborne pollen or something floated into the room and landed right on Bones as he did this. Maybe Bones would wake up with a sniffle.

His smile faded as he realized that Bones would put the blame on him first. He'd end up dealing with hypo after hypo for vaccination against every single airborne toxin and allergen his doctor roommate could think of. McCoy would say, "I'm doing this to protect your sorry, stupid ass, kid," but Jim was convinced that sometimes Bones just got a sick pleasure out of stabbing him with a hypo.

Jim frowned at himself as he made his way back to his own bunk. He got comfortable again, pulling the covers up to his chin, hoping he could burrow deeply enough in them to avoid Bones seeing what Jim was sure would develop into a black eye in the morning. What would he say? "I was sniffing your foot when it fought back?" Somehow he thought that would creep McCoy out.

Maybe throwing his friend's boots out the window wasn't as good of an idea as he thought. McCoy's snoring was now in a constant rhythm. It was to that rhythm that Jim Kirk finally fell asleep.

~X~X~X~X~X~

When Bones woke him up by jabbing him in the neck with a hypo to "boost your system to fight off the infection I somehow contracted while I slept last night," Jim didn't even protest. It was worth it to watch his roommate search the room for the missing boots. When he connected the fact that he "woke up with a goddamn sore throat" to the idea that "something like that can only come from outside, and I know I didn't sleepwalk out of bed, out of the room, out of the building and right into a bacteria-infested playground that is known to everyone else as simply outdoors," it was still worth to Jim to see Bones look down from the closed window then mumble curses to himself as he stormed out of their room most likely to cantankerously reclaim his boots. The younger roommate shook his head with a small smile as he imagined his older friend running his tricorder over his boots, and then putting them through the highest level of decontamination he could before he would even consider wearing them again.

Knowing that Bones would never believe him if he tried to tell him that he was being kept awake by his snoring and disgustingly noxious boots, Jim resolved to get himself an room freshener – no matter how feminine Bones thought it – and a pair of earplugs. If he slept through a drill because he desperately wanted to sleep, so be it. He knew Bones would drag him out of bed when he scrambled to obey the drill's procedures.

"Good God, Jim, what happened to you?" his roommate's voice interrupted his musing.

"Huh?"

"Your eye, kid! You go out last night?"

He sometimes felt like a child being yelled at by a parent when Bones did this.

"Oh, my eye? Yeah…kinda got…hit in the face."

Bones tossed his reclaimed boots towards his bed to land in the exact same spot Jim had found them, before the older man had his tricorder whirring in Jim's face. "Well, it's not too bad. Not too much swelling. Just get hit? Nothing else?"

Jim shook his head.

"Well, I can't fix the bruising right now, but I can do something about that nasty swelling." As he spoke, Jim realized that once again, Bones was somehow loading a hypo. Did he just carry them around with him somehow strapped to him like old rounds of ammunition? Before he could figure it out, he felt the familiar sting of it being shot into his neck. "Least you won't go around looking like Quasimodo, and scaring everyone off."

Jim offered him a lopsided grin. "Thanks for keeping my good looks in tact."

Bones rolled his eyes and shook his head. "Yeah," he mumbled, standing up again. "Go shower, kid. You want to look a little pretty when you take that test today right?" His mind panicked for an instant. How could he have forgotten that he was scheduled to take the Kobayashi Maru test today? He had no idea what was involved with it, only that not one student has ever passed it. With his crusade for the last two nights, he completely forgot about it! His expression must have been clear, for Bones began yelling at him as he hauled him out of bed. "You forgot? Jim, I swear, if I weren't around to tell you when to eat breakfast you wouldn't know what food even was!" He shoved him through the washroom entrance. "If you don't come out of there showered and almost ready to take this thing in the next five minutes, I'm coming in there and making you ready myself!"

Jim took the fastest shower of his life that morning. As he came out of the washroom, wearing his cadet trousers and black undershirt, and toweling his hair dry, he saw McCoy standing there with his red cadet jacket draped over one arm, his medical pack slung across his chest, a lidded cup in one hand, and a rather appealing looking pastry in the other. Jim grabbed the jacket and put it on, fastening it quickly. Then, he yanked on his boots. He grabbed the pastry and cup from Bones and headed towards the door, sipping what he was pleased to discover was coffee in the cup just the way he liked it. He heard another huff as he felt something pulled from around his neck. He looked back and saw that Bones had pulled his wet towel off his neck and shoulders, and flashed his friend a charming grin.

"Come on, Jim. Don't wanna fail this thing."

"No one passes it, Bones." He felt one more sting of a hypo, and reacted violently. "What the—"

"That should clear your head and get you more awake. Who knows, might increase your chances of passing."

"Didn't you hear what I said, Bones? No one passes it!" He tore into the pastry and chewed as he walked towards the testing center.

"You always find a way to win, Jim."

As he walked into the testing center, giving his roommate a cocky salute as he tossed the empty cup into a waste disposal bin, Jim Kirk felt confident.

~X~X~X~X~X~

Jim walked out of the testing center feeling the exact opposite. It must have shown in his posture and his stride as he made his way to his roommate who was waiting for him on a bench near enough to the testing center to make spotting him easy, but far enough away to not make it obvious he was waiting for someone and instead enjoying the weather. He looked encouragingly at Jim at first, but once he took the younger man in, his smile began to fade.

Jim dropped down on the bench next to Bones. "I didn't pass, Bones."

"Jim," he began.

"I'm just like every other person here. I failed it like everyone else."

"Don't think like that, Jim." He looked at his younger friend and knew that he was reliving the test in his head, trying to figure out what he did wrong.

"I just…I really thought I'd pass it. Show everyone that I'm not just here because I'm a hero's son. That I'm better than everyone else who did it."

McCoy studied Jim for a few moments, seeing the disturbed expression. "Maybe…maybe you're not supposed to pass the test," he offered quietly.

"Then why require it? If it's a test, you should be able to pass it! If you can't pass it, it's not a test. It's a trap."

"Jim—"

"And I've been trapped enough to know I don't like them." McCoy knew to what Jim was referring. Most of the personal things Jim had told him was divulged when he was helping the younger man back to their room after Jim had a long night of bar-hopping. He also knew that he was the only person who knew as much as he did about Jim's personal life, of his secrets, of his pain. "I don't believe that any situation is hopeless. I've known hopeless, and this stupid test isn't even close to that." McCoy watched Jim's face transform from the disturbed expression it was to a firm determination that almost resembled anger. It was a hypnotizing transformation. "I don't believe in no-win scenarios, Bones. They don't exist." He was about to reply but Jim turned to him and said one other thing. "There's a way to win this test."

He reached up and gripped his roommate's shoulder tightly in support. "Then, you find a way to beat that unwinnable test, Jim."

And just like that, Jim Kirk's confidence returned. He smiled at the other man. "Bones, when I become captain, I want you as my yeoman."

"No, you don't. You want some pretty girl as your yeoman, but I'll be your Chief Medical Officer. How about that? Someone's gotta know everything you're allergic to…pretty much everything in the universe. Someone else might poison you." They stood up from the bench and made their way across the lawn, away from the testing center. "Jim, just promise me something, will you?" He waited until Jim knew he was being serious. "Don't go rushing off into things that could get you killed. Some things I might not be able to fix."

Jim smiled wider at him, and clapped him hard on the back. He knew that one day he would captain his own ship, and that Leonard McCoy would always be there to watch his back and if need be piece him back together again if he got into trouble. "I promise, Bones."

**Notes:** _This turned out much differently than I anticipated. My fingers and brain just kept going until it got this ending. I intended it to be humor straight through, but it didn't end up that way. Oh well. I kind of like where it went. _

_Thanks for reading. Leave a review and let me know what you think! Hope everyone enjoyed it. ~ RK _


End file.
